I Will Follow You Into the Dark
by Sanetwin
Summary: I Will Follow You into the Dark Death follows Helena through the pivotal parts of her life. "I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away." – Markus Zusak, The Book Thief


**Hey sorry guys, I hadn't been posting anything to my fanfiction account. **

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**Age: 1 month **

I saw you in the backseat of a Volkswagen. A mother was driving, your mother technically, but she didn't see it that way. Her eyes were held close to the steering wheel and she panted steam. You were wrapped in a blanket as thin as a sheet of ice; your eyelashes, blonde and delicate, were frozen shut. Life clung to you like glowing embers to ash, waiting for a stiff chill, a faint breath, to snuff it out. I followed you with hands outstretched.

The snow crunched, spun into slush by the burn of rubber tires, and propelled you closer to the church. I didn't think you would make it. But even then, you clutched to life like reins to a bucking horse. Oh, how simple it would have been for you to die; to close your eyes and be lulled to sleep by winter's embrace. Your stubborn heart couldn't be swayed; you were determined to survive.

The church doors opened like wide, brown lips and emanated the warmth your body needed. She led you into the devil's mouth, and you thrived.

**Age: 5 years **

I saw you in an old motel room. The wallpaper was white with little red roses and it hung off the wall with disgust; I could see where it tried to escape with white, flimsy arms outstretched, waiting for purchase. You sat with your knuckles grazing the ground; your brown hair splayed around you and above you, floating like lily petals. Water sat in your lungs.

A stranger you called Father cupped the base of your skull, fingers splayed over your neck. This would be the last time you deny him.

His words would resound in your head for the rest of your life: _In pain, there is Godliness_.

You would believe him eventually, but not yet. One day you will bear his bloody design on your back. His deranged words will be gospel and you will be his tortured angel, his corrupt puppet.

This day is the inciting incident; although at the time you were relying solely on your desire to live, you also learned a lesson. In the half-full bathtub of the grimy motel, you learned of the mercy in obedience.

You felt me edge around your vision, the absence of life, and you knew how to elude me. When your self-proclaimed father, Tomas, pulled your head back you coughed so violently he almost put you under again. You cried, twisted your arm behind your head, and touched his face. Gasping, wheezing, you told him to give you the razor instead. You pleaded for it.

_Yes_, you sobbed, _I accept God's will_.

Tomas smiled and pressed the tip of the blade into your skin, an inch away from where your spine protruded. You pressed your cheek against the porcelain lip of the tub and took several deep, shuddering breaths.

You spent the rest of the day in the bathroom heaving up the water you inhaled. It was only when you woke up the next morning that you noticed them; the cuts stared back at you through the mirror, crying blood. Six slashes, three on each side, lay carved in your skin like ruptured veins. Blueprints, a sketch of wings you were expected to elaborate. In time, you would.

**Age: 18 years**

I saw you in the street of Munich, Germany. You had walked many miles and you had many more to go. Snowflakes fell around you and blanketed the ground, much calmer than before, but you couldn't stick out your tongue like you had in the past. Your body wouldn't allow it.

Your veins were as wide as pinpoints and the blood receded to your chest, painting your lips deathly blue. The moisture between your lips had frozen and glued the flesh together. Your shoes were little more than wet cloth and your feet had long lost feeling.

Your task was to gather information on the one named Katja Obinger. She had seemed dull to you, a rebellious youth who often skipped school and indulged herself with hourly cigarettes and stolen Vodka. You could understand Tomas' loathing, for surely a man who has dedicated his whole life to charity would find disgust in a life swaddled with privilege. You felt the searing bite of jealousy as you watched her walk with groups of people, of peers, and especially of friends. She acted differently with her friends. She smiled brighter and caught her tongue between her pearly-white incisors; her canines were pointed and slightly longer than the rest of her teeth, and they pressed into her pink tongue whenever she smiled this way. You always found yourself pressing your thumb into the pointed tip of your own canines, wondering if your smiles looked like that. They never did. Your smiles were darkened by a jutting lower jaw and snarling lips.

Katja outsmarted you, and you knew it. You knew it the moment you lost sight of her, but it was too late then. She had recognized you as her shadow and instinct told her to keep you distant.

So, bundled in the warmest furs, coats, gloves, boots, and socks, she embarked in the blinding blizzard. You, the young pursuer, followed with rags sewn over your back. She marched into town an hour later and hid in her friend's apartment, she shivered for an hour. You fell far behind her quick pace and got lost in the whirlwind of snow. A few times, you were knocked down by wind as rude as passerby, and you fell to your knees and sunk your hands too deep in the snow. With the bite of a chainsaw, the snow grated your skin and rubbed it clean. When you pulled your hands out, they were rubbery to touch and red, so red.

You found Munich three hours later and stood shocked still on the sidewalk, frozen to the bone. Your teeth were chattering so hard you could feel the impact stabbing into the nerve of each tooth.

_She didn't even know me_, you thought, and it was almost your last. I was right behind you, my fingers inches away from your blue flesh. Another minute at that body temperature and the oxygen in your lungs would have condensed, the blood flowing in your veins would have frozen, and you would have died standing up, a pale statue.

You turned your head just in time to find a man lying on the sidewalk a foot away from you. You walked to him with buckled knees, bent at the waist, and found his eyelids frozen shut and his lips chipped and blue. He wore a green parka with _real_ furl lining the hood.

_Thank you_, you said, and again in German, _Danke ihnen_. Quickly, you detached the precious sleeves from his stiff arms and wrapped yourself tight. Slowly, diligently, you pulled the green hood over your head. The fur-lining covered your eyes perfectly, protecting you from the little flakes of ice threatening to blind you. In the harshest of times, this weathered, green parka would give you warm, encircling arms when you had none and because of that, you adored it as a friend.

You found solstice in a hearth-warmed cavern and you stole bread off the plates of drunken men. An hour later, when warmth had found your cheeks once again, you walked back and took the dead man's shoes.

While kneading warmth into your feet, you decided that you hated the copies. You hated them all.

Again, I thought: _Oh, if only it could have been that simple._

**Age: 28 years**

I saw you in the alleyway outside Maggie Chen's apartment. She helped you climb from the window and you stole one last glance at her as she receded behind the curtain. Your feet found the wet cement, your knees buckled, and you fell; at this point your hair was bleached and crimped into a shape of a halo, but it only hindered your breathing as it stuck to your blood-spattered lips. Meanwhile, the wound she bequeathed to your abdomen began to bleed again. The rust of the rebar had touched your blood and you shivered with an inner chill. Your lips were like the white wallpaper you saw so long ago, peeling away from you in disgust.

Her name graced your mind like a prayer, _Not-Beth_, because you didn't know her real name; Not-Beth, you found pleasure in the disassociation. She was not Beth, she was different. Beth was like all the other poor sheep you killed and she expired with your permission. She didn't need to be put down, you thought, like Katja, whose sickened body was put to rest by the quick pull of your trigger. By now, you had realized that hatred wasn't enough to motivate you. Hatred inspired self-pity, loneliness, and even despair, but not violence. It was only when hatred became misconstrued for love that you became capable of destruction. True, unconditional, love was vulnerable to your darkest interpretation because it was the only concept that remained shrouded in the abstract. This love, the natural progression of hatred, fueled your soul and kept you marching unyieldingly; love kept you strong, it kept you alive, but it also made you cruel.

Tomas helped you with this by pushing your mind to every limit; he explained to you that Katja tried to kill you because she didn't know better; she had no soul and no moral judgment. They were empty vessels, reacting to stimuli like machinery, and suffering with damnation. You killed them then, gladly, you put them out of their misery. You were wrong, of course. I visited Beth from beneath the train she stepped in front of, and I loosened her soul; I cradled her in my arms, a beautiful soul.

You bled out in front of me, very close to death, but I did not approach. You weren't ready. Very little remained of your once vibrant soul, and it flickered behind your eyes like a passing shadow. I knew that if I took what remained, you would slip from my fingertips. You would assimilate with the earth. Your light, your color, your weight would blend in with all the other souls who were too dark for me to touch.

Tomas found you, and he sewed you together again.

**Age: 28 years and 1 month**

I see you crumpled on the floor, arms twisted beside you. The room is a ruptured vein, pulsing red in every corner. Sarah has long since left you; she now runs trembling hands through her hair and takes deep, steadying breaths. She will carry you in her memory until the day she dies. The gun is fused to her hand. Her fight is far from over.

Your mother's soul is cradled in my palm; her body, your last victim, lay crumpled by the post. Your eyes are half-lidded; blood spills into your lungs, a red sea, and makes your breath come in like heaving waves. Even now, you struggle to survive. A solider living in an unending war, you never knew when to quit. You clutch the reigns even tighter than before. Sarah's last words replace your thoughts, short, quick, and accented.

_You psycho._

_You're nothing to me._

_I've already got a family. _

These words hurt you more than the blood sitting like soup in your lungs, than your collapsed heart twitching irregularly, and they make you want to move, to chase, to mend, but you're glued to the floor.

Kneeling beside you, I lean in close so that my image is reflected in your glassy eyes, the essence of eternity. Your face is pale and twitching, struggling for life, and I know that you can see me. Your wretched breath stalls in your chest with the sound of a failing engine revving for a spark.

My hands cup the air around your face, careful not to touch flesh, and I look beyond the glassy film of your eyes. I'm looking for the flash of color, the spark of light, a glimpse of a soul.

Your thoughts pulse around me in an aurora like the Southern Lights. In this in-between of life and death, often the line between past and present is blurred. Your mother's face appears first as she talks to you in Sarah's kitchen; she picks you apart, speculating things she could never truly know about you. Carelessly, she labels you as night and Sarah as day.

You don't know where you belong anymore.

I wish I could speak to you. I wish I could pry your hands loose of those desperate reins. Life never wanted you, poor child. A fickle thing, Life, she rejected you for reasons I cannot understand, but you refused to be left behind. Stubbornly, you existed. But now your time has come, your body, a machine of war, has weathered beyond repair. Let me take you away. Let me ease your pain, your heart ache, and your bottomless isolation.

But first you must give me something to take, show me your soul. Convince me that it wasn't lost in the whirlwind of suffering; tell me it didn't leak from the cuts on your back.

As if you could understand me, I see your thoughts turn. They pivot from that dark place in Sarah's kitchen, where you hid a butcher's knife beneath the counter. Kira appears in the alleyway where you crouched, unable to go on. Her soft voice, full of concern, echoes in your mind: _Helena, what happened to you?_ She put her arms around you, and you could feel her heart beating through her thick jacket. Your first hug. The aurora flashes as quick as an epiphany. There is a brightening light, and then I hear your voice. _You are all I have now_. Sarah appears in the aurora like the projection of a film; her face turned in turmoil as you approached her, but her limp arms accepted your embrace. Gently, you said, _I love you, _knowing that those words contradicted the very foundation of your belief system.

There it is: a spark of light. I can see it glimmer in your eyes, a beautiful soul.

I enclose around you; my palms caress your cheeks and a single thumb grazes your lower lip.

The heavy breath rattling in your chest stops midway and creates a moment of perfect silence. Your hands twitch reflexively, tightening, and then letting go, relaxing.

You come away with my hands, brilliant yellow. You're cold at first, sitting in the palm of my hand, unsure of your new form. But you warm up to me, melting in my embrace like ice cream. I perch the other soul on my shoulder and leave you in my hands, a beautiful soul.

The body lay still on the red floor. Sarah will find it again in some time. It will reek of death and decomposition. She will wrap your body with the green parka you left behind and bury it in her backyard. Kira will plant yellow Marigolds around the patch of grass; your grave will become their secret.

They will join you, eventually.

We walk away; the room flickers behind us like a tired candle and disappears completely. I carry you with me.

A beautiful soul.


End file.
